Wednesday's diary on a Thursday 1.0

Thursday always used to be the start of the weekend for me and my friends, which would usually mean a few post-work drinks that would often continue so late they'd become pre-work drinks, but now Thursday means an altogether different thing...WDOAT!

Wednesday 20th September:
7.15am Loose stool
1.25pm Loose stool
6pm Loose stool

Medication:
6 x Mesalazine 400mg
2 x Prednisolone 5mg
3 x Ferrous Sulphate 200mg
2 x Calcium Carb 1.25g

Comments:
Down to a mere two Prednisolone tablets, but I think the UC has cottoned on and is gurgling his complaint. Still, it's not too bad and doesn't interfere with day to day life that much, really.

Which type are you?

I’ve got a hunch that there are two types of people in this world: those who inspect their own poo and those who don’t. There’s no two ways about it, regardless of gender, you’re either one or the other. You’re either a looker, that is to say someone who has a good long shuftie at their doings or you’re a flusher, someone who displays a far more carefree attitude towards their ablutions and pays not a blind bit of notice to what lies below. Needless to say I’m a looker, but there was a time when I was a flusher. A born and bred flusher, I was. Never felt the need to peek between my legs. Just didn’t have the inclination to view my poo. It wasn’t in my nature. I was never even curious. Didn’t give a shit to be perfectly frank. ‘Flush it and forget it’ would have served as a suitable motto had I ever felt in need of a catchy toilet based adage. Oh yes, I was a happy flusher until ulcerative colitis came along and my transformation into a looker began. On my very first morning as a looker I saw blood in the toilet. A lot of blood. Which is quite a grisly sight for any looker let alone an apprentice one. But here’s the thing, once you start looking there’s no looking back, only down. What started as an idle glance south has become something akin to a scientific study. Now when I peer into the bowl I’m checking for the three C’s: colour, consistency and content. From peachy blush to rustic terracotta, I’ve produced enough shades of reds and browns to keep Dulux inspired for a lifetime. At the moment though my iron tablets mean that everything comes out the colour of a polar bear’s nose. Consistency is consistently loose, what I would term runny. Good firm stools are hard to come by and the sight of a floater is a rare and eagerly anticipated event; a bit like Haley’s Comet. Content is where we get into the nitty-gritty. This requires a keen eye and a willingness to get down and dirty. Much like gold prospecting, patience and perseverance will be rewarded, often with the glimpse of a glistening tomato seed. All good stuff. Keeping an eye on the three C’s is essential if you’ve got UC. The three C’s give you an insight to the well being of your insides. So I’m happy to place myself in the looker rather than flusher camp. There is though perhaps a third category, a rarely spoken of, more secretive sect. Little is known of them, and outwardly little distinguishes them from you or I. You may be sat next to one right now and you wouldn’t know it. But they know who they are, and they and only they know what they do behind closed bathroom doors; they’re the sniffers. And the less said about them the better.

Wednesday's diary on a Thursday 0.8 & 0.9

Better late than never they say...

Wednesday 5th September:
9.30am Loose stool
11am Loose stool

Medication:
6 x Mesalazine 400mg
3 x Prednisolone 5mg
3 x Ferrous Sulphate 200mg
2 x Calcium Carb 1.25g

Comments:
Dropped down to 3 Prednisolone. Despite my holiday diet of pasta, pasta and more pasta things seem to be tickety-boo.

Wednesday 12th September:
8.15am Loose stool
9.45am Loose stool, gassy
4pm Loose stool

Medication:
6 x Mesalazine 400mg
3 x Prednisolone 5mg
3 x Ferrous Sulphate 200mg
2 x Calcium Carb 1.25g

Comments:
Week 2 of the Italian diet and on the whole everything is okay. I've been back on milk and cheese which doesn't seem to have had any ill effect. This whole diet thing is a mystery to me?

Wednesday's diary on a Thursday 0.7

Me and my UC are going to Italy for a couple of weeks. It’ll be our first proper holiday away together. Aaaah, how romantic. And just in the nick of time everything seems to be calming down. So as this will be my last post for a while, I’ll leave you with this.

Wednesday 30th August:
6.35am Loose stool

Medication:
6 x Mesalazine 400mg
4 x Prednisolone 5mg
3 x Ferrous Sulphate 200mg
2 x Calcium Carb 1.25g

Comments:
Stopped taking the foam enema completely after I forgot to take it one night and discovered it felt better without. Fingers crossed I'm doing the right thing. Hardly any stomach pains now, but I can still feel it's 'there'. But by far and a long way the best I've felt in months.

The Hell Drug! Smile! Cheese!

This video blog by an ulcerative colitis sufferer made me laugh. I had no idea UC could give you verbal diarrhoea too. Bless her for sharing her experiences, though, and she did manage to bring a smile to my cynical old face. If this is her on the Hell Drug imagine what she’s like when she’s feeling well. Frightening.

It was the dog, I swear

I sometimes feel a little shy on zebra crossings. I don’t like the drivers peering out at me. I feel exposed and I don’t like the attention. Yet here I am, this supposedly shy person, writing about my poo on the internet. Not exactly the actions of a chronic introvert, I agree. But when I started this blog I made a promise to be honest. To tell it like it is, no matter how embarrassing. So it brings me no pleasure whatsoever to announce that for the first time in a very long while, I can fart again. This is of course a good thing. Unless you happen to be in the room with me, in which case it’s more of an eye-watering thing. Up until the last few days passing wind would have meant a change of underwear (sheesh, now I really am airing my dirty laundry in public). But oh, what a blessed relief it is to trump without fear of touching cloth. Now when I let one go I don’t let anything go with it. My guffs are gaseous, dry as a bone. I think this is a positive development and a sign that things might be getting back to normal down below. There is a wind of change blowing in my bowels, if you like. Well, that was only mildly uncomfortable. But in order to give a truthful account of life with ulcerative colitis, I think it was worth the blushes. Better out than in as they say.

Snapshot circa '97

I hit the stool like the shipwrecked hit land. I was full to the brim drunk and I couldn’t hide it if I tried. My fingers curled around a glass. Which pub I was in I didn’t know. They all looked the same and after nine o’clock they took the menus away with the pub’s name on them. Looking around didn’t help; fathers dancing with daughters, work clothes passing for good in the gloom, money counted out beneath tables, racing slip confetti on the floorboards, swear words punctuating tobacco stained sentences. Then I remembered. It was in my hand; a scrap of paper, just a corner of something else. And written on it was a snippet, just a few little words. In a drunken version of my handwriting it read ‘THE WIGGLE WAS FUN, WELL IT WAS BEFORE. THE HAIR IS NOW GREY, BUT WHAT THE HEY!’ Seventeen words, in four lines, sealed with an exclamation mark, which I normally don’t like. I guess it was a poem of sorts. A memory tumbled into focus. It was written about and for the woman sitting beside me. I was going to give it to her. How many men in her life had presented her a poem? I was confident none. I slid the poem along the bar and fixed my eyes on hers as she read my words.
“What is it?”
“Read it.”
“I can’t, it’s all blurred.”
She was right. It was unreadable. I had slid it through a ring of beer left by a glass.
“What did it say?”
“It was a poem. I wrote it for you.”
“You remember how it goes?”
“I do, but it was meant to be read, I don’t want to say it out loud.”
“Oh.”
She wiggled a hand in front of my face. No wedding ring, I noted. Then I understood and began to write the poem on the back of her hand.
“I’m Very.”
I stopped writing. I wait for more. It doesn’t come.
“That’s your name?”
“Very Ellis.”
“It’s a very unusual name.”
“Well, it’s very me. Have you finished?”
I nod, I had. She takes her hand back and fishes for a cigarette.
“Aren’t you going to read it then?” I say.
“Later I will.”
“It’s not long.”
“I know, but I like to read in bed.”

Now I’m not drinking pubs just aren’t the same. Pubs these days are like swimming pools that have been drained; everything pretty much looks the same, but the vital ingredient that made it fun is missing. Stepping into a pub used to be like stepping through a portal to another world. A more colourful world where only the Guinness was black and white. Alcohol was your passport. With pint in hand you never knew where you would end up. Every pub had its cast of characters ready to act out the play for today solely for your entertainment. There were the dodgy geezers who’d try and sell you static caravans in the Essex hinterlands, the Jackanory merchants who had all had trials for Spurs , the pasty faced bores, the fruit machine feeders, the fat jokers crying on the inside, the ex-cons, the wastrels, the floozies, the braggers, the diehard dandies, the lonely, the incoherent and confused, pantomime landladies who could sniff out trouble at a hundred yards and pub dogs that would sniff your crotch. Like toys that come to life at night they would play and fight and squabble and love while no one was looking. Except someone was looking, and how I miss it now.